Amazon Affiliate in UK: Want Your Site to Make Money?
What is the Amazon Affiliate UK Program?
Simply put, the Amazon affiliate UK program is a way for website owners to refer traffic from a special affiliate link on their website to Amazon’s UK store, and earn a commission from any qualifying sales.
In order to see how best your business can plug into the Amazon affiliate UK program, it’s useful to understand the broader picture.
Amazon first launched in the UK in 1998 and as such it’s very well established. For many online shoppers in the UK (I’m one of them), Amazon is the first port of call, and in the third quarter of 2020, just over 10 million UK residents were signed up to Amazon Prime – around 15% of the population.
What is the Amazon Associates Affil…
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What is the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program
So, regardless of what niche your online business focuses on, there are bound to be highly relevant products on the Amazon UK store, and there are already a huge number of people shopping there. This means that the Amazon affiliate program in the UK is a great way for any website owner to generate income.
Amazon’s UK eCommerce slice
Behind China and the USA, the UK is the world’s third-largest eCommerce market. PR Newswire report that eCommerce sales in the UK totaled almost $110bn in 2020. And it’ll come as no surprise to hear that Amazon commands a formidable position within the UK eCommerce market, taking a 30% slice of the pie.
Despite Amazon’s huge market share in the UK, 70% of eCommerce sales do go through other online stores. So before we take a look at what the commission rates are and how you can become a member of the Amazon affiliate UK program, it’s worth taking a quick look at who Amazon’s competitors are in the UK…
Who are Amazon’s Main Rivals in the UK?
According to UK Business Blog, Amazon’s main rivals in the UK are:
- Argos
- John Lewis
- eBay
- Etsy
- Boohoo
- Currys PC World
It’s worth pulling a couple of these businesses out here to illustrate how Amazon is trying to compete.
Boohoo is a UK-based own-branded online clothing retailer. Launched in 2006 it has grown its sales to over $118m in 2019. Boohoo recently increased its standing through the buy-out of several big-name high street companies – Wallis, Burton, and Dorothy Perkins. The key thing with this buy-out is that Boohoo bought the brand and the online store, but not the brick-and-mortar stores. This sets them in direct competition with Amazon’s fashion category, which is why you’ll see in the chart below that Amazon Fashion has a very healthy 10% commission on Direct Qualifying monthly revenues of less than £15,000 (£21,000).
It’s a similar story for Etsy. Although an American company, Etsy (alongside other similar sites like notonthehighstreet.com) has become the go-to place online to buy those more unique and crafted items. Again, we find Amazon using the persuasion of a higher commission rate for the Handmade category to tempt affiliates to point their readers to Amazon for those kinds of purchases.
Argos and John Lewis are also hugely popular choices for online shoppers in the UK, with a lot of goodwill and nostalgia attached to the brand.
So now that we understand a little more about how Amazon fits into the UK eCommerce market, let’s take a deeper look at what the commission rates are for the Amazon affiliate UK program.
